Need advice urgently! Buy a Prius 2g ?

Yes... If you like to work on cars you can use this website to keep your Prius working well. But if you don't work on cars and depend on a mechanic who is expensive, it might not be worth it.

 

It's not that light usage presents extra wear, it's that the battery is always degrading with age whether you use it or not.

Most cars don't have so much of a "use it or lose it" value proposition, but a Prius does. Overall this makes the Prius a somewhat more expensive choice than other old cars on a cost-per-mile basis.

If the current battery is 5 years old you can probably expect another 5-8 if that was a new Toyota part.

Now if your usage drops below one trip per month you may be exposed to other lack-of-use problems but I don't think you're talking about that little use.

 

3 months old on a 5 year old hybrid battery won’t hurt it. A year of sitting would probably be a different story.

If you enjoy the car, and it fits your budget, I say buy it. These are really great vehicles. Cheers

 

I wonder if it's not so much how long the hybrid battery sits without use that's the problem, so much as how it is revived after sitting for a long time. My guess is a pack that's just barely able to start the engine and gets recharged if it can restart the engine is way more problematic and not as long lived as a full charge and balance with a grid charger after sitting for a long time.

 

It's nice to "wake" a sleeping battery gently.. jumping on it with the car at 100a or more is maybe not ideal

I have a pack from a 2008 that I have been hoarding as an experiment since December 2015 lol, every 12 months I just grid charge it until (most) modules hit 8.6v then I forget about it until the next year .. only time will tell

 

I can say from experience that battery packs that have been sitting for a prolonged period can regain capacity with normal, regular use.

I purchased an 07 Prius in early December and it had been sitting for 4 months according to the dealer, and they didn't know if it had been sitting long before they got it.. It had not been driven at all while they had it. The 12v battery had to be charged before driving it and was replaced by me the next day because the battery was at 11.9v the next morning after sitting all night. The Hybrid battery was showing IR at 28 to 34 according to Dr Prius app and during driving it would change the amount of charge indicator bars fairly frequently and fluctuate between 3 and 6 bars. The mileage was between 38 and 41 over the next several days. Fast forward to now after being driven daily and the IR is now 24 to 26 and the mileage has increased to 49.2 to 51.7 over a 150 mi roundtrip that involves going up and down a significant grade (Cajon Pass on 15 Fwy in SoCal). I do this drive several times a week, so it is a good indicator of the improved condition of the HV pack.

I purchased the vehicle with the cost of a new HV pack as a part of my budgeting for the vehicle and the dealer adjusted the price to accommodate this. But now that the battery is working well and the MPG is showing reasonably good operation of the HV/engine systems I will continue to drive on the existing pack. It's currently doing everything I expect from it.

So yeah, the condition of a little or not used pack can improve over time being driven daily and for reasonable distances. My pack, except for extreme grades stays almost exclusively in the 5 to 6 bar range and in the large uphill grade down to 4 bars. This is a significant increase from the day I purchased it. Lucky? Maybe. Individual cells are not created equally and can fail in different ways. I'm sure Toyota tries to carefully match cells before assembly, but there are always small differences between individual cells in both charge and discharge profiles.

I'm not saying all HV packs will recover equally to mine, or even recover at all. But I think driving the vehicle on a regular basis easily (as I tend to drive) with very little heavy tip ins or WOT accels might give the HV pack the chance to improve. And if it doesn't, then the work begins and decisions have to be made about whether to recondition or replace. I think a lot depends on the SOC before the period of non-use since NiMH batteries can lose up to 50%/yr of the available energy if not used. So if SOC was low before storage, it could easily reach a threshold of damage to the cells that might be unrecoverable. Also, NiMH cells are prone to the dreaded dendrites which cause micro shorts within the cells causing the same effect as parasitic draw on the cell. Daily exercising the cells can eliminate or reduce these dendrites if it is not too bad, but if too long a period goes by and these micro shorts have reduced the charge levels below a certain level the cell will be likely unrecoverable.

Each case is going to be different, but I think it is worth the effort to see if the HV pack will improve after being put back into service from a long dormant period.

 

Sooner or later your cat will get stolen....

 

hoping this trend does not get going in Australia

Been meaning to make a post about how to clean or even gut them, without cutting

 

I agree. When my 2010 Prius was 4 years old and had about 40,000 miles on it I took a job abroad for a year. A friend was supposed to drive it periodically but hardly ever did, so it basically sat for a year. The 12v battery was dead but the hybrid battery worked fine and still works perfectly at 11 1/2 years and 101,000 miles.

So, if the price is right, go for it, especially if you can do some basic maintenance work yourself.

 

i just put the modules from a 2005 pack in my 2010! the said modules sat on my shed floor for about 4 years getting periodically charged.. i am using up my hoards of modules in order of oldest to newest!